New Mexico Bill Would Criminalize Abortions After Rape As ‘Tampering With Evidence’

A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial.

House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence.”

‘Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.

Third-degree felonies in New Mexico carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

Amazing that the same anti-abortion advocates who claim that a fetus is a person (and are pressing ahead with personhood amendments) have no problem treating a fetus as an object or property when the need suits them.

The only thing this does is further stigmatize and penalize a woman who is already traumatized by the rape/sexual assault and is now pregnant as a result.

Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.

From your link, but not your excerpt:

UPDATE: 12:25 p.m. — Brown said in a statement Thursday that she introduced the bill with the goal of punishing the person who commits incest or rape and then procures or facilitates an abortion to destroy the evidence of the crime.

“New Mexico needs to strengthen its laws to deter sex offenders,” said Brown. “By adding this law in New Mexico, we can help to protect women across our state.”

She’s obviously a liar. Because if the goal really was to protect women, the law would have been written differently— there wouldn’t have been this clause about procuring an abortion. She’s a liar and hater of women.

She’s obviously a liar. Because if the goal really was to protect women, the law would have been written differently— there wouldn’t have been this clause about procuring an abortion. She’s a liar and hater of women.